Well, they do make a point to show off his 6 pack and musculature, which is mostly a gay trait. Also, many angles and pictures of Jesus are pretty sexy (except the hippy hair), lighted just right - his face and jaw with an innocent and inviting look on his face. Something I am sure all the closeted priests and sex starved nuns had something to with, or at least enjoyed in secret. A passing nun or friar glancing up at a ripped christ hanging on the cross, barely clothed, I am sure invited in some excitement in their repetitive routines of chanting, fasting and praying.

"The Man Jesus Loved" clears away centuries of traditional Christian teaching to reexamine Jesus's positions and roles with regard to personal relationships and family values and how these relate to the Kingdom of Heaven. Members of the Christian Right in the USA are frequently known to state that biological family trumps everything, that marriage can only be between an adult man and an adult woman, that active homosexuals are automatically condemned to burn in the flames of hell, and that women and children should be subordinate to men. Centuries of the teachings of St. Paul, many early Church Fathers, of Church Councils, of Orthodox Jewish (and Islamic) teachings, and Papal directives are cited to support these views.

The author, Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Ph.D. is a professor of biblical and constructive theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and is a United Methodist clergyman. He is not a crank but a trained professional willing to take another look at the Jesus story before the Church became a part of the respectable Establishment of the Roman Empire. It turns out that all the above mentioned teachings of members of the Christian Right are challenged in the Gospels (and in supporting documents like the Gospel of Thomas).

Jennings starts out by examining the title character's role in the Gospel of St. John [John 13, 18-21]. It turns out that there is substantial similarity between the relationship between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple and that between a lover and a beloved in a Hellenistic gymnasium; nowadays we would say they were boyfriends or lovers. Jennings reviews various attempts to identify the Beloved Disciple and goes into the stories of the nude youth fleeing at the arrest of Jesus, of Lazarus, of the youth at the tomb of Jesus, and of the usage of the words eros vs. philia vs. agape (different Koine Greek words for love) in the text. Furthermore, there is no indication Jesus and the Beloved Disciple would not have consummated the relationship. Jennings makes a case that traditional commentators prefer to ignore or sublimate.

Jennings moves on to show how the story of the Centurion's lad (pais,doulos) [Matthew 8:5-13] might reasonably be interpreted as Jesus being happy to help a sick lover in a same-sex relationship and on Jesus's compassion for eunichs.

The final section gathers the evidence that Jesus wanted to convert traditional family values to a situation where everyone cares about everyone else and all have a direct connection to God. My example: Jesus would be angry at the present situation where wealthy families push their children to go to the best schools and succeed-or-else while allowing poor children to go to schools with leaky roofs and no books and have no health care. Jesus supported and included women on a largely equal basis with men. Jesus wanted people to break their dependence on family and the accumulation of wealth and power and instead to treat each other well and to do good. This includes treating women as equals, being accepting of various sexual orientations, and not condemning sex itself. Traditional morality is mostly focused on preserving property rights and amassing wealth; the original position of the Jesus movement was different.